Institutes & CentersInstitute for Applied Linguistics - Multilingualism and plurilingualism - Projects - STEMCo

STEMCo

Stances Toward Education in Multilingual Contexts

Stances Toward Education in Multilingual Contexts (STEMCo) aims at helping teachers accommodate linguistic diversity in their classrooms by taking an ethnographic look at how school communities locally conceptualize and treat multilingualism. The project provides a platform for teachers to reflect on their practice, learn from each other, and implement any opportune adjustments to their didactics. The goal of this project is to produce a teaching staff that is prepared to embrace and promote linguistic diversity, recognize and troubleshoot language-related issues as they arise, and be reflective about the effects of didactics on students’ identity development and communicative competence. Ultimately, the data collected during the research phase will become the foundation for a broader open-access professional development program for teachers of multilingual students throughout Europe.

Project duration: April 2022 - June 2026
Project status:
Website: projectstemco.eu
Institute: Institute for Applied Linguistics

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Scientific Publications

Journal article2026

Language ideologies and the hidden curriculum in L2 German: a case from Italian-language middle school in South Tyrol

Leone-Pizzighella AR, Telser E

This article takes a dual approach to analyzing language ethnographically in an educational context by (1) exploring ideological discourse about an ethnolinguistic group and (2) illustrating how the structure of in-school communicative events shapes this ideological discourse. In layering these two foci, this analysis shows how language ideologies [Woolard 1998] can gain or lose traction when coupled with particular interactional structures and curricular materials. This classroom discourse analysis [Rymes 2009] draws on an academic year of ethnographic engagement in a middle school in the autonomous Italian province of South Tyrol to highlight one way in which the local Italian-German ‘bi-community bilingualism’ [Dal Negro 2009] manifests in and may emanate from everyday pedagogical and professional practice in this school.

The initial analysis examines ideological discourse that emerged in an Italian-language middle school about so-called ‘Germans’, German, and Germanness during the year. This includes analyses of three lessons in German class focusing on the topics of Deutsch in Bildern (the Germanosphere/Germanness in pictures) and Typisch Deutsch (typically German items and ways of being). We then examine the interactional structure of the communicative contexts in which this ideological discourse occurred. Together, these analyses demonstrate that – in a context where many interactions are time-constrained, hierarchical, and/or transmission-oriented – it is fundamental to create spaces for unpacking such ideological discourse so as not to contribute to a biased hidden curriculum [Giroux and Penna 1979].

DOI Source

DOI: 10.1080/17457823.2025.2505885

Journal article2026

What Does Multilingual Research Show Us About Research Ethics? Examples and Challenges From the Field

Schönthaler S, Leone‐Pizzighella A, Mitterhofer J

Johanna Mitterhofer, Sophia Schönthaler

Ethics review boards (ERBs) often clash with the emergent, iterative, and co‐constructed nature of critical and constructivist research. Conversely, these approaches also challenge ERBs, particularly around the role of language in informed consent, knowledge co‐construction, and dissemination. Multilingual research makes these tensions especially visible by foregrounding how language shapes research processes. This article examines the overlooked ethical dimensions of multilingual research, especially in relation to institutional ethics review. Drawing on our multilingual work with marginalized communities, we show how language mediates critical aspects of research practice: from obtaining consent and navigating gatekeeping to co‐constructing knowledge. We pursue three aims: (a) reflect on how language mediates ethics approval in critical and constructivist inquiry; (b) explore how sensibility toward language fosters epistemic justice, cultural sensitivity, and methodological appropriateness; and (c) raise awareness of the role of language in ethics procedures, research relationships, and definitions of data. We illustrate these aims with fieldwork examples highlighting the challenges of building trust under restrictive ethics protocols; the need for nuanced linguistic practices in contexts of inequality and underrepresentation; and the use of arts‐based methods as an alternative to language‐based approaches. The article concludes with examples from the formation of our multilingual institute’s ERB and recommendations for other boards.

DOI Source

DOI: 10.17645/si.10805

Journal article2025

Introduction to the Special Issue: The lamination of institutional and ethnolinguistic labels in contemporary education

Leone-Pizzighella AR

This editorial opens a collection of five empirical research papers from four different countries, in which the authors adopt a language-focused ethnographic perspective in their explorations of how ethnolinguistic and institutional forms of "groupness" become intertwined in educational contexts. The papers included herein draw on ethnographic research in Finnish vocational schools, in an urban community education center in Norway, in a Maya pre-school in Mexico, in German-language pre-schools in a trilingual province of Italy, and in public middle schools in Italy. It closes with a commentary which re-examines all five papers in light of how structure and agency interact in the formation of identities.

DOI

DOI: 10.1080/15348458.2025.2561503

Journal article2025

The ideation, naturalization, and invisibilization of Discourses in Italy’s tracked secondary education: a critical scalar account

Leone-Pizzighella AR

The present paper analyzes the Discourses underpinning the tracked secondary education system in Italy through the lens of sociolinguistic scales (Blommaert 2007. Sociolinguistic scales. Intercultural Pragmatics 4(1). 1–19). Via an examination of education policy documents, historical accounts of policy discourse, classroom discourse data, ethnographic fieldnotes, ministerial websites, and literary texts, this paper considers how the Discourse of classism (with a capital D, á la Gee 1990. Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses, critical perspectives on literacy and education. London & New York: Routledge) which underlies the foundations of the tracked school system in Italy has gradually become naturalized and then ‘invisible’ (that is, hegemonic) as it has traveled through scales of political and social speech and texts (discourse with a lowercase d). This paper considers an alternative view of scales not as spatiotemporal spaces, places, or settings, but as types of metadiscursive labor (Carr 2006. “Secrets keep you sick”: Metalinguistic labor in a drug treatment program for homeless women. Language in Society 35(05). 631–653). This paper also discusses the role of critique, drawing on Pietikäinen’s (2016. Critical debates: Discourse, boundaries and social change. Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates) concepts of emancipatory, ethnographic, and carnivalesque critique, in rendering visible and available for re-scaling the Discourses which become invisible over time.

DOI Source

DOI: 10.1515/multi-2024-0224

All Publications

Language ideologies and the hidden curriculum in L2 German: a case from Italian-language middle school in South Tyrol
Leone-Pizzighella AR, Telser E (2026)
Informa UK Limited
Journal article
Ethnography and Education

More information: https://doi.org/10.1080/17457823.2025.2505885

https://doi.org/10.1080/17457823.2025.2505885

What Does Multilingual Research Show Us About Research Ethics? Examples and Challenges From the Field
Schönthaler S, Leone‐Pizzighella A, Mitterhofer J (2026)
Journal article
Social Inclusion

More information: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/v ...

https://doi.org/10.17645/si.10805

Identifying and being identified: Peer language policing and cries of racism in middle school
Leone-Pizzighella AR (2025)
Journal article
Journal of Language, Identity and Education

Project Team

Andrea Renee Leone-Pizzighella

Project Manager

Lorenzo Zanasi

Andrea Abel

Scientific Advisory Board

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Journal article2026

Language ideologies and the hidden curriculum in L2 German: a case from Italian-language middle school in South Tyrol

Leone-Pizzighella AR, Telser E

DOI Source

DOI: 10.1080/17457823.2025.2505885

STEMCo